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Anthony St Clair

The Lotus and the Barley, a Rucksack Universe Novel

Synopsis

Their entwined fate becomes his impossible choice.
A strange eclipse looms above India's city of the smiling fire. When an ancient evil awakens, the world teeters on a razor's edge of life and annihilation.
Rootless globetrotter Jay wanted Agamuskara to be just another place he visited, but the strange object in his backpack has other ideas. In the global secret order of Jakes and Jades, destiny-changing Jade Agamuskara Bluegold stands above the rest, all the while keeping up appearances as the humble proprietor of the Everest Base Camp Pub & Hostel. However, she struggles to untangle the terrible future she foresees and to ignore her doubts about her past choices. Despite themselves, both Jade and Jay befriend the evasive, stout-quaffing Faddah Rucksack—a man without a destiny who seems determined to direct their own. As fires rage in a land of ash, a backpacker, a bartender, and the world's only Himalayan-Irish sage become trapped between their entwined fate and an impossible choice.
FOREVER THE ROAD is a captivating page-turner in Anthony St. Clair's Rucksack Universe. If you like Neil Gaiman, Terry Pratchett, or Octavia Butler, you'll love this ongoing fantasy series of globetrotting intrigue.
Buy the book to start Anthony St. Clair's tale of travel twists and turns today!

Author Biography

Fantasy author and beer writer Anthony St. Clair has walked with hairy coos in the Scottish Highlands, choked on seafood in Australia, and watched the full moon rise over Mt. Everest in Tibet. The creator of the Rucksack Universe series, Anthony has traveled the sights and beers of Thailand, Japan, India, Canada, Ireland, the USA, Cambodia, China and Nepal. He and his wife live in Eugene, Oregon, and gave their kids passports when they were babies. Learn more at www.anthonystclair.com.

Author Insight

The slow death of greatness

You know the old saying that it isn't the fall that kills you, it's the sudden stop at the end? Stories often focus on the sudden stop. Often, however, the fall began long before.
That's the case here. A glorious company, renown throughout the world. Now, its once-proud headquarters has fallen into neglect and disrepair. The people who care about it do the best they can, but they are being choked off by people in charge, who don't care—or, rather, they care far more about something else.
That said, don't bother thinking that this has any sort of symbolic merit or comparison with our current world.

Book Excerpt

The Lotus and the Barley, a Rucksack Universe Novel

THE WORDS LAUGHEDAT the black iron gates and punched through the thick doors and walls of First Call Brewing. Gabsir stopped running, and wheezed for breath as he pulled out his large keyring. As usual the gate’s lock froze and clunked. He swore as he jiggled the key and smacked the rusting iron.

“Gabsir?”

He looked up. The courier stood there in his orange jumpsuit, head down. He held out a large, thick brown envelope.

“What is it this time?” His clanking, clattering keys scratched more paint off the gate.

The courier shrugged. “All I know is it’s from the Lotus. And it came from the top.”

“So not full of large-denomination bills,” said Gabsir. At last the gate squealed open. Gabsir took the envelope and signed for it.

“I heard it on the way over,” said the courier. “I’m sorry.”

Gabsir nodded and raised an arm toward the brewery. “Step inside. Take some beer with you before you go.”

At the door he stared at the faded, splotchy paint and sighed. “First job they ever gave me was to paint this door,” said Gabsir. “I spent all day on it. Got chewed out—it was one thing to be thorough, but it was quite another to be slow about it.”

The courier on his way with a case of GPS, Gabsir locked the gate and then closed the door. He took a deep breath in the dim room. The roof above the lobby had developed a leak five years ago. While they had tried and tried to patch it, dampness had set in, and the wet, stale scent of mold saddened him. At one time the lobby had been bright, and was full of displays and memorabilia from the long past of the world’s favorite beer—old advertising posters and billboards, coasters through the ages, the evolution of the distinctive curved pint glass that defined GPS almost as much as the beer itself.

It was all gone now. Guru Deep had sold it to a museum.

The empty lobby now was cracked tiles, faded woodwork, and empty light fixtures. Gabsir was certain he saw more holes in the wood paneling from some sort of damn insect.

He caught his breath and held the envelope tighter. It had happened at last. His insides writhed like a batch of wort bubbling up to a boil, but that couldn’t matter. Right now it was time to be Gabsir Abrigs again. The white shadow behind the brewmaster. The man who made sure the kettles boiled and the beer flowed and the fermenters kept the right temperature and the kegging and bottling lines were clean enough for birth.

He just wished his hands weren’t shaking.

“It’s one thing to be old,” said Gabsir to the mold in the ceiling and the bugs in the walls. “It’s another thing to feel old.”

He steadied his hands as best he could while he carried the large brown envelope through the lobby and down one of the rounded passageways that cut through the brewery like a rabbit warren. The way was dim; most of the bulbs had burned out and hadn’t been replaced. Nonetheless, he could see the occasional gleam of the rectangular white tiles that covered the tunnel and floor. The brewery might have been dilapidated, but na Grúdairí could make even dilapidation gleam.